Broadband News

Improvements to telephone call handling to help avoid fraud

Scammers and fraudsters are nothing new, the tricks may evolve and the
technology may change but the confidence tricks remain largely the same and now
with changes made to most of the UK fixed and mobile phone networks the old
scam of phoning to pretend to be the police or a persons bank and advising
someone to call their bank to resolve a problem and when the person hangs up
staying on the line and then pretending to be the persons bank to obtain
passwords or a PIN may be over.

BT has changed the way its exchanges operate and other providers have too,
so that if you answer an incoming call and hang up the line will be dropped now
within two seconds, rather than the much longer period
previously. It seems many people did not notice the lack of dial tone before
dialling before, though some scams actually played tones back to customers to
make things more convincing.